Max, if you survive your final test, can you steal me one of those magic outfits for me?" I'll try to get one for each of us. Hey! 'If'?

And there I was, pretty as heck, brown eyes, a few freckles, fashion challenged, and a bad attitude. Max II.

How could you stop loving me?

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.

I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.

I don't get a chance to be funny with the thrillers. I like to be funny, and I think I am really funny. So with 'Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life', it was fun to let loose.

Cats are like Baptists. You know they raise hell, but you can never catch them at it.